Category: farming

The idea of farmers’ rights arose in international governance in the early 1980s, a reaction to the increased demand for plant breeders’ rights, and to ensure farmers’ continued contribution to the global genetic pool – addressing the rights not of individuals, but of entire peoples. Its purpose was also to draw attention to the unrecognised innovations of peasants that are the foundation of all modern plant breeding.

The growth of the industrial seed sector and parallel loss of peasant seed systems has not occurred through some natural or inevitable process. It’s the result of deliberate policies designed to promote an industrial seed system based on seed protected by intellectual and industrial property rights in which peasants are given little or no choice to use that seed.

The Treaty places responsibility for the realization of those rights on national governments.

In 2017, an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Farmers’ Rights (the AHTEG-FR) was established to work towards the implementation of farmers’ rights established in Article 9 of the Seed Treaty. The Expert Group has a unique opportunity to contribute to the development of international norms in realizing farmers’ rights. The first meeting of the Expert Group was held in the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN buildings in Rome 11-14 September 2018, with a mandate to create an inventory of national measures that support farmers’ rights and explore options to ensure more countries implement Article 9.

Membership of the Expert Group & Farmers’ Inclusion in Decision Making

The membership of the Expert Group includes government representatives from countries in all regions of the world, mostly from ministries of agriculture, and representatives from civil society, farmers’ organisations, and the private sector. Of those chosen from civil society and farmers’ organisations, only two delegates are farmers themselves (the others are NGO staff), and one of those (a Samoan farmers’ org) was apparently selected by the Australian Government.

The single peasant farmer present at the first meeting of the group is from a rural women’s organization in Mali and was there on behalf of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC). Her name is Alimata, and she is a fantastic advocate for peasants and especially women in Mali and regionally and globally. However, Alimata only speaks French, and while the meeting was simultaneously interpreted in English, French, and Spanish, all documentation was provided only in English – including a 91-page synthesis report of what is happening across the world in regards to farmers’ right to seed. Further, all fresh documents created during the meeting for immediate discussion and decision making were also only provided in English. This created a serious barrier to participation of peasants in the discussions around how to implement our rights.

The meeting was a striking manifestation of how corporations control the food system.

The International Seed Federation (ISF), which represents plant breeders globally (including seed and chemical giants Monsanto and Syngenta), is a delegate on the Expert Group. The ISF delegate contributed frequently and forcefully, and virtually every contribution she made was an attempt to limit farmers’ rights rather than implement them as per the mandate. An early example includes her assertion that ‘when implementing the rights of certain groups of farmers we should not be detrimental to other groups of farmers.’ This is equivalent to suggesting that protecting the rights of women or people of colour somehow damages the rights of straight white males.

It was perhaps even more galling to watch her pass notes to the delegates representing the governments of Canada, the United States, and Australia (‘the colonialists’), apparently instructing them on many of their interventions, as well as regularly exchanging meaningful glances with the colonialists.

Canada led the charge of the colonialist governments keen to protect intellectual property (IP) rights over peasants’ rights to seed. The Canadian delegate gave a presentation highlighting the massive increase in canola production, telling the Expert Group how ‘happy’ Canadian farmers are with this lucrative GM [mono]crop, and completely ignoring the environmental costs of such ‘green deserts’.

He also spoke of how the [industrial] farmers in Canada have worked to restrict their own use of protected plant varieties ‘for the public good’ by supporting an act that protects biosecurity for the industry. And then he listed all the peak industrial farmers’ organisations with whom his office consults as an example of meeting Article 9’s right to participate in decision making – even Syngenta gets a regular audience.

The example of Canada brings up the question of which kind of farmers’ rights does Article 9 seek to protect. While it is rather farcical to get into a debate about whether industrial farmers should have rights – they already have far more rights than peasant and indigenous farmers – we, civil society, want peasant and indigenous farmers’ rights protected even in highly industrialised countries like Canada, the United States, and Australia.

Every country has a responsibility to ensure that their peasant and indigenous farmers’ rights are upheld – their rights under 9.3 to use, exchange and sell seed, and their right to participate in decision making bodies. The list from Canada of organisations did not include the National Farmers Union, for example, a group that defends the rights of small-scale family farmers contributing to agro-biodiversity. How are GM canola farmers contributing to biodiversity? Canada’s list also did not include the Assembly of First Nations nor any of the other organisations defending indigenous peoples’ rights.

We heard of an interesting initiative in Chile, where the Ministry of Agriculture has a Civil Society Council within it. This is apparently a standard practice in other departments in Chile as well – one with great promise to ensure grassroots voices are not left out of important decision-making processes.

Our delegate Alimata asserted that ‘we as farmers say that these rights that belong to farmers are collective and community rights. So IP rights – UPOV – this belongs to the private sphere, it can’t pertain to farmers’ rights. As far as biodiversity is concerned, we feel that it is best preserved out in the field, where farmers breed, renew, and adapt them to their environment. We’re all aware of the effects of climate change, and that biodiversity allows plants to adapt. Farmers cannot grow crops without the rights to grow, save, sow, and sell seed. The best practices also include culinary practices – we’ve lost this love of taste – improved seeds also mean that we’ve lost touch with many things that were useful.’

Alimata further noted how strange it was that there were so many discussions of how to implement farmers’ rights in the synthesis report provided, while the voices of farmers were so few. This was a point I also raised in my initial IPC report on our regional consultations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where I suggested that a room full of men making decisions about womens’ rights would be considered an outrage by most reasonable people these days, and yet here we were in a room full of bureaucrats and a handful of farmers who were mostly present as silent observers – we were not even permitted to speak as they deliberated on whether or how to implement our rights.

The delegate from the US addressed the author of the synthesis report to say, ‘if we’re pitting farmers’ rights against increased yield and farmer incomes then we have a real problem – can you clarify?’ Her response was that farmers’ rights are inhibited because of the focus on increased yield & profit.

Protection of Traditional Knowledge

There was discussion from the more sympathetic delegates that supported farmers’ rights – notably Ecuador, Iran, and Malawi frequently spoke in support of farmers. Iran noted that in many traditional communities, farming is a way of life, not just an income. For example, he shared that ‘there are certain seeds offered to the gods, not just planted, so culture is really important… but that in the meeting we seemed to be just talking about farmers’ rights as economic rights… the right to exchange, maintain seed is a part of heritage.’

Italy backed this position up by asking, ‘What does protection of traditional knowledge mean? Knowledge is reduced to a tradeable object.’ He argued that it is a struggle over meanings and values, and suggested the language move ‘from biopiracy to bioprivateering. – you are not only stealing, you are changing the way of life of the people you steal from.’ He summed up by asserting that the classical view of seeing protection of traditional knowledge only through IP Rights is a colonizing discourse.

A discussion around the issue of misappropriation highlighted some of the key conflicts – on one hand, peasants and indigenous peoples don’t want their traditional knowledge misappropriated for the profit of others, but on the other if knowledge isn’t shared it might become extinguished. Italy responded by noting that there are two ways to protect traditional knowledge – either by just protecting the object, or by protecting the subject – the people who are the holders of the knowledge. The ISF told us she ‘didn’t like’ the word ‘misappropriation’, and the US shared her discomfort with the term.

Which Farmers Should the Treaty Protect?

The IPC suggested that only farmers who contribute to the conservation and renewal of the diversity of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture own these rights. Farmers who simply buy new commercial seeds every year do not contribute to the conservation of PGRFA. They are subject to seed marketing laws and any intellectual property rights that protect them.

Farmers who use their own farm seeds from commercial seed cultivation adapt them to their terroir and their cultivation method. They select the best adaptation traits in their fields and thus contribute to improve the diversity of PGRFA. They therefore own the Farmers’ Rights.

Farmers who select, breed and conserve their own seed from traditional local varieties or PGRFA from the Multilateral System of the Treaty all contribute to the conservation of PGRFA. They are therefore all holders of the Farmers’ Rights and they are not subject to the seed trade laws or Intellectual Property Rights if they are an obstacle to Farmers’ Rights.

In India, where much work has been done by peasants and activists such as the legendary Vandana Shiva, farmers can save, use, sow, re-sow, exchange, share, or sell farm produce including seed of a variety protected under the Act. Farmers cannot sell branded seed of a protected variety, but they are protected by the ‘Innocent infringement’.

Alimata pointed out that there are frameworks and rules that limit farmers’ rights at all levels, for example:

limitations in relation to the marketing of seeds (e.g. mandatory registration);

dematerialization of genetic resources and patents on digital sequences of information on genetic resources; and

phytosanitary rules.

These frameworks and rules have been created for the industrial seed system and apply to it. However, the industrial seed system is not covered by Article 9 of the Treaty, and so the creation of specific and autonomous legal frameworks that apply to peasant seed systems is a key measure to guarantee the rights of peasants to save, use, exchange and sell seeds.

From the beginning, ISF pushed to ensure the Seed Treaty is ‘mutually supportive with other instruments’ – by which she meant that recognizing farmers’ rights should not be at the expense of ensuring plant breeders’ rights to their IP (as assured for those 75 countries that are members of UPOV), which inherently restricts other farmers’ right to seed.

A delegate from the US suggested that the group limit the scope of these discussions by taking part 9.1 off the agenda. 9.1 states that ‘The Contracting Parties recognize the enormous contribution that the local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions of the world, particularly those in the centres of origin and crop diversity, have made and will continue to make for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources which constitute the basis of food and agriculture production throughout the world.’ So America wanted to strike simple recognition of peasants and indigenous peoples from the group’s consideration.

The Politics of Recording History

Quite literally one entire day of four was taken up with a very lengthy discussion on the structure of the table that would be created to collect the national measures in place or in the process of implementation to support farmers’ rights. At first it seemed like either serious mismanagement of the process or a distraction, but in fact, there was a lot at stake. The initial proposal included a column to identify which part of Article 9 a national measure was addressing, and the colonialists didn’t like this level of specificity which might keep them from more general measures that do not in fact directly support farmers’ rights.

The true, hidden debate was exposed in the final discussion on the adoption of the report of this first meeting. The US proposed inclusion of a line that said ‘the inventory [of national measures] is not producing new obligations on [national governments]’. Ecuador, Malawi and Iran spoke in opposition to this line, noting that a) an inventory of course does not produce new obligations – it’s meant as a guide to support the creation of more such measures; and b) they already have obligations under Article 9 as signatories to the Seed Treaty.

In a fascinating case of a bureaucrat losing his cool, the US held his line – ‘I was collaborative in nature, I conceded a point earlier in the spirit of collaboration because I just wanted this sentence. I will hold steadfast to this.’ He pointed out the column he didn’t want in the template that will refer to which part of the Article the measure addresses. ‘We all agree it’s non-controversial, that the inventory doesn’t create new obligations, so why can’t I have this sentence?’ In his steadfastness, he revealed his bias to reject as much language as possible that might hold his government accountable for genuinely supporting farmers’ rights. Canada, Australia, and the ISF all supported the US’s position. The US suggested the deletion of the offending column ‘relevance to the provision in Article 9’ and then he would let the sentence go. Ecuador and Malawi conceded as Switzerland blew neutral raspberries directly to my right.

One of the most egregious efforts from the colonialists was a request from Canada to remove paragraph 11 from the report on the meeting – the paragraph in which the IPC was acknowledged as having delivered a report on civil society’s regional consultations. The US supported Canada’s proposal. The half dozen farmers in the room who were there as silent observers were in shock – not only were we there to silently listen as the colonialists and corporations negotiated to limit our rights at a meeting ostensibly intended to support implementation of our rights, they now wanted to erase us from the record.

Ecuador, the only country in the world with a food sovereignty act, passionately defended the inclusion and recognition of all the work that went into the IPC regional consultations with farmers. Italy and Iran supported Ecuador, and of course Alimata supported the inclusion of our report as well. One of our farmers present quietly informed us that he saw the delegate from UPOV suggest the edit to the colonialists in the lunchroom.

The paragraph that recorded our participation remained in the report. It was small victory in the face of intense global domination by corporations. Had we not been present to defend ourselves, we would have been erased from the history books, as peasants have been for time immemorial. But we’re getting ever more organized, and collectivized… and we will not be silent.

The following excellent essay is by our current volunteer resident, Grace Jirik, who is currently nearing completion of a Bachelor of Ag Science & International Development. Grace has precisely captured why so many young people are turning hopefully to agroecological farming at the same time that others are running from industrial agriculture. With emerging young farmers like Grace lined up to take over the reins, I reckon the future looks bright!

* * *

Approximately one third of total greenhouse gases are attributed to agriculture and the food systems that support it.[1] It is predicted by climate scientists that warming of more than two degrees celsius will cause irreversible damage to the environment and catastrophic consequences for humanity.[2] Thus, it is of vital importance that the sector drastically shifts away from further industrialisation and instead adopts methods to reduce the contribution to the climate change crisis. The population is expected to reach 8.9 billion by 2050 and increase the demand for food, particularly in the world’s poorest countries.[3] However, the calls to drastically increase food production to meet demand with further industrialisation of the sector and deforestation of arable land is an unsustainable trajectory. In reality, food systems may only need to increase production by 25% to meet demand [4] which can largely be achieved by adopting agroecological models of farming. Without a drastic remodelling of world agricultural systems, the increase in food production will have catastrophic environmental consequences and further reduce the agricultural systems capacity to produce enough food.

The emergence of the so-called “Green Revolution” and the proliferation of industrial farming in the 1960s [5] greatly increased agricultural production through the introduction of artificial fertiliser and the breeding of cultivars to respond to these inputs.[6] But after 50 years, the sector is now faced with the reality that these farming methods are unsustainable and have resulted in a drastic loss of productivity in recent decades.[7] Despite this, industrial agriculture continues to hold a powerful position due to the vicious cycle that it has forged in the sector, paired with the continued availability of cheap fuel.[8] In order to change this trajectory, farming systems need to transition to agroecological models; that is, farming that strives to “mimic natural processes, thus creating beneficial biological interactions and synergies among the components of the agroecosystem”.[9] This model must be widely adopted to help curb global warming and maintain sustainable food systems that can feed the world into the future. In the words of Fuhrer and Gregory, “There is no doubt that agriculture can (and must) be part of the solution to the problem of global warming.”[10]

Agroecological farming systems can mitigate much of the greenhouse gas emissions currently produced by agriculture. Currently, 10-12 percent of global emissions are directly from agriculture [11] and a further 4-13 percent from land clearing for agricultural land use.[12] Much of these emissions come from industrial farming methods that require high inputs of fertiliser, energy and water.[13] In contrast, agroecological farming models use more holistic land management methods. For example, the use of integrated pest management uses beneficial insects, plant deterrents, and staggered crop planting to control pests instead of heavy applications of chemical pesticide.[14] Studies have shown that on farms where integrated pest management was adopted, there was a 71 percent decrease in pesticide use and a yield increase of 42 percent.[15] If such methods were embraced across the world, the energy required for manufacture and transport of pesticide would be enormously reduced and those emissions successfully mitigated.

Similarly, the overuse of fertiliser is a significant area for mitigation potential. The greenhouse gas emissions released in fertiliser manufacture and transport represent the majority of total emissions released in agricultural ‘preproduction’.[16] In addition, direct application of nitrogen fertiliser on soil is the source of most (58%) [17] of total global nitrous oxide production; a gas that has 310 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.[18] By employing the use of green manures, crop rotation and regenerative methods of farming, the use of fertiliser can be cut down without sacrificing yield [19] and consequently mitigate a significant portion of the agricultural sector’s emissions.

Another area with arguably the most significant potential for greenhouse gas mitigation is carbon sequestration in soil. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 89 percent of agricultural carbon could be mitigated using better practices to ensure soil carbon storage.[20] Soils that contain more organic matter have a much greater ability to store carbon in the long term.[21] Due to the regenerative nature of agroecological practices such as not tilling the land, crop rotation and low stocking density, the soil on these farms tends to have far higher rates of ‘soil organic carbon’ than industrial farms [22], hence releasing less carbon into the atmosphere directly from the soil. And finally, the role of plants in metabolising carbon in the atmosphere is known, the IPCC estimates that “1,146 GtC is stored within the 4.17 b ha of tropical, temperate, and boreal forest areas”.[23] Agroforestry, the planting of trees on farmland, is a key part of agroecological farms and can be a part of the solution to widespread land clearing.[24]

In addition to mitigation, agroecological farming systems will be important in the adaptation required in the face of climate change. There are a plethora of studies that show that agroecological systems are more resilient to climatic shocks than conventional systems.[25,26] This is mainly due to the increased ground cover, higher levels of organic matter within soils and the diversified species on farm that are common in agroecological systems.[27] With the expected increase in damaging climatic events such as cyclones, floods and droughts[28], it is vital for farmers to be able to protect themselves from these events. For example, when ‘Hurricane Mitch’ hit Nicaragua in 1998, those farmers who had adopted agroecological methods such as agroforestry, had 69 percent less gully erosion and retained 40 percent more topsoil than those who had not.[29] Agroforestry is also extremely beneficial in providing shade and preventing heat stress in livestock.[30] It is also known that agroecological farms require less water[31] which will become increasingly important as temperatures start to rise and droughts become more prevalent.

Further to the physical environmental benefits, agroecological systems also build community and individual adaptive capacity. The IPCC has recognised that people who are “socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally, or otherwise marginalised are especially vulnerable to climate change”.[32] Thus, for the majority of the world’s poor living in rural areas and working in agriculture[33], the challenges of global warming will be especially debilitating. Many efforts in the past that attempted to improve the livelihood of these farmers simply replicated the industrial farming model of increasing inputs in order to raise yields of a globally marketable cash crop.[34] However, the failures of this method are evident, as “815 million hungry people are family farmers who produce most of the planet’s food”.[35] Agroecological farming systems can help protect from shocks in climate and in the market that would otherwise undermine these livelihoods. By diversifying what is farmed instead of producing a monocultural cash crop, the farmer is less at risk of climate related plant defects or market failure of that particular product.[36] Additionally, an agroecological model that is less reliant on external inputs such as fertilisers, chemicals and diesel fuel makes farmers less dependent on a potentially vulnerable supply chain.[37] Agroecology has also been shown to bring a strong social dimension to farming in strengthen the social security networks that are essential to resilience.[38] This is especially true when agroecological methods of farming has been disseminated from farmer to farmer through self organisation, collective action and reciprocity.[39]

To conclude, agroecological farming can be a powerful tool in reducing the agricultural sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. The methods can successfully mitigate the majority of emissions currently released. Agroecology will also be vital in societal adaptation to the effects of climate change. It will also strengthen adaptive capacity for individuals and communities. Agroecology has the power to divorce agriculture from the industrialisation that causes global warming.

Emotional Dimension

My emotional reactions to this topic were strong because much of my life outside of university revolves around this exact issue; how can I fix farming? Half of my degree is agricultural science and in a matter of months I will be on my journey to be a farmer, outside the walls of La Trobe. Researching this topic was exciting because I was able to find actual data and evidence that showed the way I want to farm is actually the best model for the planet and for my own profit.It was encouraging and enlightening information that I will take with me on my future farming ventures.

However, researching was also incredibly frustrating at times. To be faced with the evidence that agroecological farming could be the answer to curtailing the agricultural sector’s contribution to global warming, but no evidence of wide adoption is infuriating as well as confusing. The models that are in place at the moment are undermining farmers by locking them into a heavy reliance on fossil fuels and putting money into the pockets of middle men.[40]

Recently I have had my eyes opened to the food sovereignty movement, mainly as a consequence of being an intern for Tammi Jonas, the current president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance. Food Sovereignty “asserts the right of peoples to nourishing and culturally-appropriate food produced in ethical and ecologically-sound ways, and their right to collectively determine their own food and agriculture systems”[41]. With my new knowledge of the movement and its importance around the world, researching how ‘big agriculture’ is dismantling farmers’ and consumers’ right to food sovereignty, was particularly emotional.

At times throughout the research I also felt helpless. Many of the industrial systems have been implemented around the world to create a dependency on the model through regulations, retail imperatives and policies that keep fossil fuels cheap.[42] This is why many farmers are ‘locked in’ to an industrial model despite how they may feel about the environmental damage they’re causing. Although I believe that there is huge opportunity for change, researching the vicious cycle of industrial farming that so many people are caught in made me feel somewhat helpless.

Existential Dimension

Much of the research on the topic confirmed my place in the world. Throughout my degree I have been exposed mainly to industrial practices of farming; however, through my own exploration I had found the agroecological alternative. I feel like I belong firmly within this space and am excited for my future in farming and being apart of the uptake of agroecology.

Additionally, I feel more encouraged to be involved in the push against industrial farming. Before researching the topic, I felt comfortable in my future of being an outlier in agriculture with alternative methods. Now I feel strongly about being a part of a global movement away from intensive farming and spreading the information that farmland will be more productive if the agroecological methods are adopted. The research showed that there are members of the industry that rely on this information not becoming wide knowledge due to their reliance on exploiting farmers. These members include fossil fuel companies, fertiliser and pesticide manufacturers and GMO companies who breed specific products to flourish in intensive environments.

However, throughout the research I found that ‘scaling up’ was a popular topic.[43] Arms of the UN such as the Human Rights Council and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) are particularly interested in how we can scale up production via agroecology.[44] This made me question my position on the issue. Although we do need to adopt better farming methods to feed the future population, one of the most significant barriers to greenhouse gas mitigation is growth.

The capitalist ideal of constant growth goes hand-in-hand with environmental degradation. And, as Herman Daly puts it; “the term ‘sustainable growth’ when applied to the economy, is a bad oxymoron – self-contradictory as prose, and unevocative as poetry”.[45] An issue that is too big to address in this essay, but unavoidable when talking of this topic, is the fact that as the population and economies continue to grow, so will greenhouse gas emissions. Agroecological agriculture will certainly bring a better environmental future, but the pressure of population is difficult to limit.

Empowerment and Action Dimension

Researching alternative methods of farming has definitely fostered a sense of responsibility to be ecologically conscious in my future farming ventures. I already knew that I wanted to run a ‘sustainable’ farm, but now I feel as if I have a better sense of direction and can better picture what form it might take.

I am at a point in my life where I believe I have the privilege to farm how I like and think that I would have enough engaged and environmentally conscious customers to be able to prosper. However, I haven’t even made it to the planning stage of my future career and I imagine that eventually I will come up against barriers and be moved to protest. For example, in Australia there has been numerous cases of overregulation of small scale farms due to the lack of differentiation between intensive and agroecological models.[46]

Though I admit that I may not be the most “engaged actor” in the near future, I believe that as I establish myself as a farmer I will become more engaged as time progresses. I will be directly exposed to the difficulties faced by small scale farmers and feel a stronger sense of responsibility to stand up for our rights. Through researching this topic and other extracurricular exploration, I have discovered peasant movements and groups small scale farmers doing exactly this and I already feel a sense of belonging among them. This subject has helped me immensely by further opening my eyes to the reality of fossil fuel domination of our society and the need to dismantle their power structures.

Human Rights Council, ‘Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food’, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, (2010) <http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/docs/A-HRC-16-49.pdf>, accessed 30 May 2018, 2

Human Rights Council, ‘Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food’, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner [website], (2010) <http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/docs/A-HRC-16-49.pdf>, accessed 30 May 2018

World Bank, ‘Poverty Overview’, The World Bank [website], (11 April 2018) <http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview>, accessed 6 June 2018

Human Rights Council, ‘Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food’, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner [website], (2010) <http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/docs/A-HRC-16-49.pdf>, accessed 30 May 2018, 6

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, ‘FAO’S Work on Agroecology’, FAO [website], (2018) <http://www.fao.org/ 3/i9021en/I9021EN.pdf>, page 6, accessed 30th May

Human Rights Council, ‘Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food’, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, (2010) <http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/docs/A-HRC-16-49.pdf>, accessed 30 May 2018

(Unfortunately I was not able to deliver it myself as I was laid low with the flu, so it was read for me instead by the handsome, passionate fruity farmer Ant Wilson.)

Our theme here at APC14 is ‘connectivity’ – and I can’t imagine you’re an audience that needs to have the importance of connectivity in the food system explained to you. This is a group of empowered people motivated to make the world better one homegrown carrot at a time, a group that seeks to ‘be the changes we wish to see in the world.’

I am one of you.

We had our first permaculture garden in Melbourne in 1995 as we attempted to move away from being simply consumers to mindful producers of our own food, growing it in a system designed on ecological principles as we had learned from David and Bill’s book (never realizing we would end up neighbours and friends of David and Su 16 years later).

Many permaculture-esque suburban gardens later, we made it to our own farm at Eganstown, outside Daylesford, in the heart of a community that cares deeply about ecology, food systems and a just world for all.

We set out to farm pigs and cattle on 69 volcanic acres because as a former vegetarian, I felt compelled to grow more pigs outdoors to offer a true alternative to the horrors of intensive livestock production. For more than two decades I’d been aware that people are only eating those pretty little plastic-wrapped trays of pork and poultry from the supermarkets because they are totally disconnected from the source. If you ever set foot in an intensive pig or poultry shed, you’d have to be either willfully forgetful or downright heartless to continue eating meat from that source.

Within a year of selling our uncommonly delicious pasture-raised meat, I took over the butchering and we started our CSA – community-supported agriculture. CSA was started in Japan in the 70s under what are called the Teikei Principles. The most basic principle of Teikei is a direct distribution system based on relationships, not mere transactions. It is also based on sharing not only the rewards of organic or agroecological farming, but also the risks.

I’ve written in Pip Magazine and on our farm blog about the ways our members have supported us through some hard times, but I want to share another farmer’s story here – Shinji Hashimoto in Japan.

At the International Network for CSA (Urgenci) conference in Beijing in 2015, Shinji shared two examples of the power of CSA. In the first, there was a tsunami in the town where his members live. Knowing they would have limited access to food, Shinji harvested as much as he could and delivered food not only to his members, but also to others in need.

The second story really drove the reciprocity home – an earthquake caused a landslide that covered Shinji’s fields. He thought he was done – without heavy equipment and already in his 60s, he was devastated to think this was the end of a long and fruitful life of farming. But within a couple of days, his members turned up with equipment and numbers, and cleared the rubble from his fields, leaving him to commence prepping his beds again, only one season lost instead of an entire future of farming.

That is connectivity.

It goes way beyond knowing your farmer to nurturing your farmer. Beyond knowing your members to nurturing your members. When your connections are this strong, you simply couldn’t in good conscience make food that makes people sick, like the rubbish peddled by the likes of Nestlé, Pepsi and Coca Cola.

So now let’s have a look at disconnection in a hyper-connected, globalized world.

I’ve just returned from UN meetings in Fiji, where we learned many things, including that 60% of Fijians are overweight or obese. This shocking statistic is due to a reduction in traditional diets based on root crops, fish, coconut, bananas, avocados, mangos and breadfruit, which are being replaced with imported sugary, highly-processed so-called food like industrial white bread, margarine, soft drinks, cereals and animal fats – more than 50% of calories consumed in Fiji are now from imports. An amputation due to diabetes is performed every 12 hours in Fiji.

At another meeting in Rome the previous May, I sat in horror as an advocate for fisherfolk in Tanzania told us of the vultures waiting at the watering holes for the children who ‘didn’t make it’ as their mothers trekked further and further to dig for clean water in the midst of a severe drought.

No matter how well we raise our pigs or tend our tomatoes, our actions will not help the Fijians, the South Africans, the Tanzanians, nor the one in five Australians who may be food insecure at any time. We have no choice but to go beyond connectivity to collectivity – only by collectivizing, organizing, and mobilizing can we ever hope to radically transform global food systems to make them fair for everyone.

People these days openly criticize capitalism, an economic system that feeds profits over people and that has undeniably failed us all. The Fijian and South African stories are cases in point of the destructive impacts of unchecked capitalism, as is the rise of free trade agreements that are not only spreading obesity such as in Fiji, but also the spread of diseases such as the new strains of influenza coming out of the pig and poultry sheds and threatening us all with a global pandemic, what my friend and scholar Rob Wallace calls the rise of the ‘NAFTA flu’.

Those who ‘opt out’ of the system are ‘being the change we wish to see in the world’, but we have to do it collectively or ultimately very few of us will benefit. One of the most legitimate critiques of the various aspects of the food movement is that it is ultimately a movement for privileged white people. It is up to all of us to take the movement out of our own backyards and into the streets.

Apartheid didn’t end because white people suddenly decided to stop being racist dicks. It ended because the people revolted.

Joel Salatin is fond of saying that governments only regulate the things that kill us quickly, while largely ignoring those that kill us slowly. I’d add to that and say we the people aren’t very good at fighting revolutions against the things that are killing us slowly – we find it difficult to sustain the energy (and also to work out how to fight these more complicated battles).

We no longer have a choice. As Charlie Massy has urgently explained, we are in the midst of the Anthropocene, where human impact has permanently altered the Earth’s geology and sustaining systems, causing ecological destruction and extinction of species. “It is the greatest crisis the planet and humanity has ever faced,” he said, “It makes a world war look like a little storm in a teacup. And we are in denial.”

Driving to Mildura recently, I realized that Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu has given me new lenses for this ancient land. Thanks to Bruce, I can not only see the clapped out paddocks that have been tilled and sprayed until there’s nothing but a toxic desert out there, I can just make out what was there before – the fields of myrnong – and so now I realise even more what a travesty our industrial agriculture systems are on this fragile landscape.

So I ask all of you, a group of people who must surely be some of the most connected to your food systems in the country, will you collectivise beyond the permaculture [insert any other aspect of the food] movement? You have passion, knowledge, and experience to build on – hell, you even have science! Now how about political will – do you have enough of that?

In two more recent must-read books, Beginning to End Hunger by Jahi Chappell, and the Foodies’ Guide to Capitalism by Eric Holt Gimenéz, Jahi and Eric both make the same point – that people in the food movement typically concentrate on one or two issues rather than the system as a whole. So we focus on the right to food, urban ag, CSA, regenerative ag, animal welfare, GMOs, or pesticide contamination to name a few.

As Eric elaborates, ‘Given the severity of the problems in our food system, this is understandable, but this focus often eclipses work to build longer-term political movements that could address the root causes of those problems. What’s more, organisations often find themselves in competition for funding, making it difficult to forge diverse, cross-issue alliances dedicated to systemic change. Intrepid individuals and food entrepreneurs working on their own in specialised market niches are even less likely to address systemic issues.’

Here today I reckon none of us are just ‘stupid optimists’, we are rather what Adriana Aranha calls ‘an active optimist.’ The more we collectivise our action, the quicker we can restore everyone’s right to culturally-appropriate and nutritious food produced in ethical and ecologically-sound ways, and our right to democratically determine our own food and agriculture systems.

Peter Hunt, a Weekly Times reporter, has treated the concerns of Victoria’s pastured livestock farmers over proposed planning reforms with total contempt, calling them ‘delusional.’

This seems unsurprising given Hunt spent many years in a policy role with the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF), a body whose reputation for attacking small-scale farmers is increasing.

Pastured pig and poultry farmers have rejected factory farming and are instead growing animals outside in the fresh air. They devote their farms to growing healthy animals in ethical and ecologically-sound ways.

In an op ed in last week’s Weekly Times, Mr Hunt trotted out the drivel the Victorian Government is seeking to rectify when he called pastured livestock farms ‘intensive’.

Hunt went on to make spurious claims about the biosecurity risks of free-range poultry and pigs. However, it is sheds full of thousands of animals living with their own excrement that are the real source of a massive public health threat – those sheds are ‘food for flu’ as evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace states.

The Government’s attempt to reform the planning provisions has fallen short of the 2016 recommendations of the Animal Industries Advisory Committee (AIAC). The AIAC called for the scheme to recognise the lower risk small-scale pastured pig and poultry farms pose, and for planning controls to be commensurate with that risk.

The AIAC called for small-scale pastured pig and poultry farms to be treated like other grazing production systems.

The AIAC went through an independent public consultation. However, once handed to Agriculture Victoria, the ongoing consultation was limited to peak bodies for intensive agriculture – Australian Pork Limited (APL), Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), and the VFF, and a handful of cattle farmers. There was no representation for pastured pig and poultry farmers, and Ag Vic came back with a draft that sees all pig and poultry farms with more than 200 birds or three sows needing a permit.

The Government, the VFF, and the likes of Hunt keep repeating that all pig and poultry farms have always needed to get a permit, however, they fail to acknowledge that requirement was only recently established by a VCAT case in 2015. This was a trigger for the need to reform the planning scheme. Calling a farm with 100 pigs on 40 acres ‘intensive’ was deemed inappropriate, and the controls applied incommensurate with the risk.

Hunt’s track record of sloppy and inaccurate journalism does the public interest no favours, and his disdain for pastured pig and poultry farmers tells where his allegiances lie.

I’ve spent the better part of what will soon be (gasp!) three decades worrying about the ills of industrial animal agriculture, and most of today gathering some of the relevant stats around the amount of feed grown globally to feed livestock in preparation for writing about what we’re trying to achieve in our feeding system at Jonai Farms. Bear with me…

And then it occurred to me that the numbers don’t matter that much. We simply must stop growing monocultures of grain crops only to process and feed them to animals. Whether it contributes 3% or 18% to greenhouse gases, it’s just bloody unnecessary and entirely a result of industrialised agriculture, which segregates each aspect of production in the most unnatural ways instead of growing food in diverse, integrated, and holistic systems.

There’s a complicated discussion to be had around the differences between feeding grains to ruminants (such as cattle, sheep, and goats) and non-ruminants (aka monogastrics like pigs, poultry, and people), but that’s for another post. (Fun fact for those who don’t already know this – horses are not ruminants, they’re monogastric herbivores.) In that discussion we could talk about the suitability of a part or whole grain diet for ruminants, and differences in greenhouse gas emissions from different species, but I’ll simply offer this short quote about some of those complexities before moving on:

‘…pork and poultry production currently consume over 75% of cereal and oil-seed based on concentrate that is grown for livestock (Galloway et al., 2007). Therefore, while ruminants consume 69% of animal feed overall, nonruminates consume 72% of all animal feed that is grown on arable land (Galloway et al., 2007). Consequently, while enteric fermentation from nonruminants is not a significant source of GHG, indirect emissions associated with cropland dedicated to nonruminant livestock might be significant.’ Ref.

Like I said, it’s complicated. So this is a slightly long-winded introduction to telling you the story of what we feed our animals at Jonai Farms and why we’ve made the choices we have.

***

From the outset with our pigs and cattle, we wanted to farm agroecologically – ‘working with biodiversity to provide the farming system with ecological resilience and reduce dependence on costly, often harmful, conventional inputs’. One thing that means is that since obtaining our first pigs, we had intentions to salvage or produce enough feed for a complete diet for them without purchasing grain purpose-grown for livestock.

It’s been five years but last week we achieved that goal!

From very early on, our pigs have been fed primarily a diet of spent brewers’ grain (some of which Stuart ensiles with molasses to stabilize it for storage and increase the energy extracted by the brewing process). We drive twice a week to collect a total of around three tonnes of this grain. The cattle are fed any excess, particularly during the height of summer and depths of winter when nutrient value of the feed on the paddocks is lower.

In addition to the spent brewers’ grain, Stuart has managed to salvage so-called waste stream (or in some cases ‘surplus yield’) feed from the dairy, fruit, and vegetable industries, including post-harvest ‘seconds’ of everything from potatoes to strawberries, colostrum-rich cow’s milk during calving season, and supply-chain damaged or unwanted dairy products such as milk and cheese.

Two summers ago a dairy processor delivered an entire container load of milk – in thousands of plastic bottles – when they had an oversupply due to some kind of logistics failure. We contacted every pig farmer we knew and got them to collect as much as they could haul away but were left with enough milk to feed out for many months. In consultation with our vet, we were confident that spoilt milk is not dangerous nor non-nutritive for the pigs – they continued to enjoy it well past the point where we enjoyed feeding it out.

We’ve only made minor inroads into fodder cropping, with some success at growing turnips and brassicas in the mostly rye paddocks we inherited in our attempts to wean ourselves off purpose-grown commercial grain.

We have, however, planted at least one hundred oak trees and a couple dozen other nut and fruit trees to provide fodder in what we hope will eventually be a full-blown agro-sylvo-pastoral system. Trees take a really long time to grow and they’re hard to keep alive through our hot summers, but Stuart does his best to nurse them through the heat.

While the brewers’ grain is a steady supply upon which we can rely and the paddocks provide a proportion of the happy piggehs regular diet (up to 20% depending on the season), the other salvaged feed has been sporadic – not enough to rely on without ensuring we had a nutritious regular feed on hand to supplement the brewers’ grain.

This other ration has always been a pelletised grain we’ve bought from a Victorian feed supplier. The standard ration we were originally offered was a mix of barley, wheat, peas, lupins, bread mix, mill run, soy, post-industrial food waste (such as bread meal and Smarties off the factory floor to increase the energy), essential amino acids (such as methionine, tryptophan and lysine), and vitamins and minerals. We said ‘no, thanks’ and asked for a custom ration that was just barley, wheat, and lupins and paid an extra $50/tonne for the privilege of keeping all the nutrititive and non-nutritive additives and soy out of it.

The pellets formed anywhere from 15-30% of the pigs’ diet for the past five years (depending on their age and stage, e.g. wet sows get more pellets to ensure they’re getting sufficient proteins to support reproduction). It was convenient, very little wastage, and simple to monitor nutrition as the feed company’s nutritionists did all the knowledge work for us. But it never sat well with our principles – we’ve been relying on the very industrialised food system we rail against!

Last week everything changed when we got a call to collect 23 tonnes of water-damaged rice (only about 2 tonnes of which was actually damaged). It wasn’t lost on us that this rice was sent from a country with much higher levels of food insecurity than Australia only to be condemned on food safety standards when the vast majority of the shipment was perfectly palatable, but much better to at least divert it to feed and keep it out of the landfill. We shared the bounty with some other farming mates, and ultimately collected 14 tonnes ourselves, which we unloaded manually one five-kilo bag at a time into our shed.

On the second day of collecting the rice, we were also offered some 14 pallets of milk from the landlord of a distributor who’d gone into (heh) liquidation. Again we shared the love and collected five pallets for ourselves, all of us grateful to the landlord who wanted to see the milk used and not wasted.

The rice stores well, and if we feed it out at 10-15% of the pigs’ normal ration (as advised in the plethora of research articles I’ve read on the topic) we have enough for nearly two years. The milk will last a couple of months if fed out at up to 20% of their ration. We actually live next to a dairy and have been discussing buying milk directly from him as we would pay the same as we were paying for pellets (50 cents per litre, and we pay 50 cents per kilo of pellets) for a higher quality feed, while supporting one of the many struggling dairy farmers in Australia (he’s been paid as low as 25 cents per litre this year). So if more waste-stream milk doesn’t come our way we have another source of milk, a near-perfect feed for pigs as it contains the essential amino acids needed for optimal health, fertility, and growth.

Inspired by all this salvage feed, I contacted a local free-range egg farmer we know and have planted the seed with him to get their egg seconds as well, which he said he’s happy to barter for pork (when the other pig farmers who take some don’t get in first!).

This windfall of salvaged feed sent me back into a whirl of planning for 2017 – I do love a good spreadsheet – and we’ll be adjusting a few priorities now that we’re entirely reliant on salvaged feed.

For a starter, building a shed near the pig paddocks with a 20-foot container to store dry feed in a rodent-proof box has jumped up the list. While we wait for our oaks to produce for the pigs, we’re also keen to collect acorns and chestnuts in autumn and dry store them in the container to feed out, in this case not so much diverting waste as using a wasted resource that is abundant in our region.

The tractor we’ve wanted to buy for a few years but just couldn’t fully justify in a system we are physically capable of running manually (for now – ask again in a decade!) has also climbed the priority ladder. Offloading many tonnes of feed by hand is neither desirable nor sustainable when it’s our regular feed source. One mad week of offloading nearly 20 tonnes made us feel proud and strong, doing it regularly would quite likely make us feel dumb and tired!

A critical point about the shed and the tractor is that we can afford them because we just erased a significant feed bill from our budget – as with all things, taking on more labour ourselves rather than outsourcing it to others frees up more cash to invest in infrastructure and equipment.

But on that labour point – dealing with salvage feed is significantly more labour-intensive, and it also usually comes with a level of packaging waste that ultimately costs us as well. In the case of the rice bags, we have to pay if we need to deliver rubbish to the tip more than once per month. And there’s the extra time and labour to unpackage the rice and the milk, as well as milling and soaking the rice to make it fully digestible by the pigs. Some of this is a nuisance and is a hidden cost if you’re not paying attention. I’ve adjusted our business planning spreadsheet to fully account for the change in motor vehicle use and increase in waste disposal to ensure we know how much this ‘free’ feed actually costs us (financially – we also weigh all financial choices up against the environmental and social benefits of each decision, and salvage feed wins on every count).

The necessity of learning more about pig nutrition and carefully adjusting their rations to ensure they’re getting the best possible diet is some of the real work of farming, something that’s been lost in large-scale industrialised agriculture where the knowledge and competence to source, process, mix and distribute feed has been outsourced to another segment of the ‘industry’.

Stuart and I are both feeling excited and invigorated by our newest milestone and its requisite stepping up our skills and knowledge. It’s got us back on the case of working out an effective and productive mixed perennial and annual fodder cropping system in the paddocks as well.

There are more improvements happening with the cattle I’ll write about soon enough, where I’ll include details on the introduction of the chickens and their eggmobile out on the paddocks providing an incredible ecological service to our soils while nutrient cycling what would otherwise be ‘waste’ from our own boning room. This year we not only quit commercial grain and made it fully onto salvaged feed, we also went from being ‘paddock-to-plate’ to being ‘paddock-to-paddock’!

Swill feeding (feeding waste feed that includes any meat product or product that has been in contact with meat) is banned in Australia and much of the industrialised world. There are some good reasons for this, as some downgraded food can become contaminated with pathogens that make animals and/or the people who eat them ill. For example, foot and mouth disease, which can be derived from contaminated meat products fed to pigs, has wrought havoc with pig production overseas. A blanket ban on swill feeding is typical of most regulation – incapable of dealing with complexity – and clear guidance and monitoring of use of swill would obviously be preferable for a small-scale farm. Meat meal is actually quite common in most pig feed (they are omnivores after all) – it is heat treated to kill potential pathogens. We have concerns about the origins of said meat (and fish) meal, so always opted out of that option in the pellets.

What I will say about the moral panic around feeding pigs swill, a practice claimed to be thousands of years old, is that it serves to protect the interests of Big Ag (whether intentionally or not) to the detriment of small-scale farmers. Intentionality is to an extent immaterial – the consequences are that a) food is wasted that could have gone to producing more food, b) small-scale farmers are forced to pay higher feed costs rather than use their labour to re-purpose waste, and c) most farms are forced to rely on monocultural grain production.

While we obviously don’t feed any swill to our pigs, we would love to see a day when sensible, safe regulations were put in place to allow swill feeding to reduce waste, increase smallholder profitability, and end reliance on unsustainable grain production for livestock feed.

Two years ago we traveled to France and Italy to learn more about how they raise pigs and produce charcuterie and salumi. Disappointed to discover that the pigs are virtually all raised in sheds, we stopped calling our air-dried hams ‘prosciutto’ and changed to ‘jamón’ as we understood at the time that Spanish pigs with the appellation ‘Jamón Ibérico de Bellota’ are raised outdoors and finished over autumn and winter on acorns – a beautiful system.

This year we visited Spain to see this beautiful system firsthand. There is a lot of jamón eaten in Spain, and a lot more exported. In 2014, 43.5 million pigs (almost equivalent to the population of Spain, which was 46.7 million in 2014) were slaughtered. (Compare that with 4.85 million pigs produced in Australia for a population of 23.5 million.) So as we drove down through the southwest and up the western half of the country before crossing to Barcelona, we were on the lookout for these millions of pigs. There weren’t many on the paddocks, but the white concrete sheds with their signature malodorous air were ubiquitous.

As we traveled we were interested in the aesthetics – in the texture, flavour, and colour of jamón across Spain – and we also wanted to know where and under what conditions it was produced. Only then would we ask how the jamóns are cured – what is the salting technique, the drying times, the maturation periods? Although we contacted two farms in hopes of a visit, we received no response from either, perhaps because we arrived before the famous montañera time where (some of) the pigs are actually outdoors?

We found the famous dehesa landscapes where the prized Jamón Ibérico de Bellota are finished on acorns, but most were vacant until the nuts would start to drop at the start of October. In Extremadura and Huelva provinces, some dehesa still sheltered the bulls grazing the last of the dry-standing grass of summer as they awaited their bullfighting fate. The few pigs we saw outdoors were on bare, rocky ground, and according to the FAO only around 10% of Spanish pigs (the Jamón Ibérico de Bellota) even get those few months outside under the shade of the picturesque oak forests.

By the end of our time in Spain I was back to eating mostly vegetarian, and we will no longer be calling our hams jamón.

While the Spanish manage to produce quite a delicious product by finishing the pigs for three to four months on acorns, those pigs spend the first year of their lives in sheds, and the sows live and farrow entirely indoors. (NB I understand that there are a very small number of farms raising pigs on pasture, too few to discuss here where I’m looking at jamón production generally.) And so while the Spanish have succeeded in the aesthetics of their jamón, in my view they have not done so on the ethics.

What’s the big deal about raising pigs in sheds anyway if the final product tastes good?

I spoke recently to a crowd of about 200 people confined in a lovely long hall and asked them whether they’d be happy to spend the next five months there with no opportunity to leave. I didn’t even mention that they’d wee and poo where they sat, and if they were lucky the floor would be slatted for the excrement to drain away from the mass of bodies. Nobody popped their hand up to stay in the building, and yet I’d wager that the majority in the room would regularly eat meat from animals who never left the shed in which they were raised.

But even if we improve the air quality and deal with the concentration of effluence in responsible ways, is it enough? What kind of lives do pigs who can only mill about in a crowded shed have?

And we need to talk about breeds and the serious risks posed by lack of biodiversity, especially when compounded by intensive confinement. Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu, talks about sheds of 15,000 turkeys as ‘food for flu’. They’re a perfect feasting ground for viruses without an ‘immunological firebreak’ due to the homogeneity of the animals. While he was in Australia recently, we discussed the idea of regional planning for diversity and resilience – active, informed, grassroots community planning to ensure we raise different breeds across a region to create that firebreak in case a virulent strain of swine or avian flu escapes the intensive sheds.

There’s a strong movement to eradicate routine use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics in intensive livestock production – administered to everything from pigs and poultry in sheds to cattle in feedlots. The industry itself is discussing the problems of over-use of antibiotics, namely the rise of superbugs like MRSA and the threat that soon we won’t be able to treat the most basic bacterial infections with the most common antibiotics like penicillin. Denmark already banned the routine use of antibiotics and yet it is still the biggest producer of pork in the world, so it’s clearly possible. The Netherlands has similarly banned antibiotics, prompted by the fact that pig farmers there are >760 times more likely to be carriers for MRSA than other Dutch citizens – if they visit the hospital they’re immediately taken to quarantine to protect the rest of the population.

So we have compelling animal welfare, ecological, and public health arguments to radically change how we raise pigs and poultry, and yet while the fair food movement consistently makes many of these arguments about the ills of industrial agriculture, there is a distinctive gap in our ethics of practice. Our time at Slow Food’s Terra Madre this year highlighted this very clearly – as we elbowed our way through the crowds of people enjoying a day of tasting alleged slow food along the kilometres of stalls, we were disappointed to learn that all but one pork producer we could find were growing their pigs intensively indoors.

While Slow Food (like the Spanish jamón producers above) excels at the aesthetics of the food it promotes – promoting ‘slow’, traditional, and delicious, how is it doing at the ethics? What do ‘good, clean, and fair’ really mean? Slow Food International took a stand against foie gras a couple years ago, but it has not done so against intensive animal agriculture, and hosts many prosciutto producers at Salone del Gusto every two years who raise pigs in sheds. I would really like to see them pursue this discussion and take a strong position against intensive livestock production.

As I said on the Slow Meat panel at Terra Madre, just because you cure it slowly doesn’t make it slow… you need to grow it slowly too.

And the same goes for serving factory-farmed meat at fair food movement events – you can’t simply intellectualise this stuff and pontificate on the ills of Big Ag and the oligarchy while munching on their produce. If procuring ethically-raised meat is impossible due to complicated catering contracts and a dearth of small-scale pastured livestock farmers, we can at least serve vegetarian food (with its own attendant issues if sourced from the globalized industrial food system, e.g. tropical fruit in Victoria in the dead of winter… that’s not even an aesthetic success.).

As most people reading this already know, food has material impacts on the land and people that produce it, the animals raised for food, and the people who eat it. If we only take a moralizing analytical stab at the problems of the food system and then serve it up for dinner we are doing a material injustice to all parts of the very system we are trying to transform. Slow Food and all of us in the food sovereignty movement can and should show leadership (as Slow Food has on many topics) and insist on the ethics of meat production being at least of equal importance to the aesthetics.

Travel consumes us, just as we consume the material and philosophical artefacts of the destinations of our desire. We bump onto foreign soil and commence imbibing difference with all senses, some more pleasant than others. We eagerly osmose saturated blue skies, reluctantly inhale the sourness of the unwashed on the train, and happily let the sweet and salty depths of jamón melt on our tongue…

Stuart and I have spent our entire shared life consuming culture, learning our way into other lands by eating churros in Madrid, gazing at Rembrandts in Paris and listening to sitars in Varanasi, reading Machiavelli and Balzac in the Tuileries, and ambling through centuries of Gothic flying buttresses and villages and cities planned and unplanned for habitation. 20 years ago we would read all the relevant novels we could lay hands on before traveling to a new country, and I would commence reading recipes and trying them out on family and friends even before our adventures, only to come home and improve on those dishes after having tasted their distinctions in situ.

So engrossed was/am I with understanding the ways in which we consume culture in pursuit of connectedness, and of a cosmopolitan ethic, that I spent eight years working towards a PhD on the topic, the formal study of which I’ve since abandoned, though it remains a lifelong preoccupation.

Since before becoming a farmer, my interest in consumption logically shifted to a more primary concern with production, ipso facto consumption’s supplier. Our recent trip to Spain, the home of jamón ibérico, exemplified this, as we searched for the roots of jamón, not just the taste. I’ll write more about our findings on jamón in a later post, as here I’d like to share my thoughts on our other observations throughout Spain.

We spent a scant 18 hours in Madrid, and in that time noted:

carnicerías are everywhere in the centre with ceilings and walls lined with jamón,

there’s a bottle of Spanish olive oil on nearly every table,

Spanish olives are standard on tapas menus, but the quality is anything but standardised,

the smoky spice of pimentón is as distinctive to Spanish cuisine as jamón.

Where and under what conditions is all this produce grown?

As we dashed south out of Madrid in the motorhome we dubbed the Slothvan (unfair really as it was quite speedy on the autovía but lumbered around curves in a not-unpleasing sloth-like fashion), we couldn’t help but be struck by the endless monocultures of olives, seemingly Spain’s equivalence to the central valley of California’s almond groves without the obvious ecological disaster of irrigating a thirsty tree in a drought-prone land. There were rarely water pipes in sight, but also absolutely nothing but olive trees for hundreds of kilometres – no grass between the rows, no shrubs – just thousands and perhaps millions of trees dotting the rocky soils.

I wondered who owns these orchards and just how big are they? What impact of the growth of Spain’s olive oil industry has there been on the land and local communities (let alone the Italian and Greek industries?) Surely the consequences are the same as anywhere agriculture scales up and smallholdings are lost – more chemical inputs in the name of efficiency and yield, subsequent land degradation, and reduced employment for rural communities who once relied on the viability of many small-scale farms… though a quick bit of internet research reveals that while Spain’s olive orchards are on average bigger than their neighbours’, they are still relatively small by Australian or American standards at 5.3ha (compared with just 1.3ha in Italy!). According to what I read though, lack of control of the value chain keeps the farmers from prospering, just as it does worldwide (the FAO has an entire workstream dedicated to connecting smallholders to value chains).

Dotted amongst the olive groves are huge solar and wind farms – in a dry, rocky land, the Spanish are very wisely harvesting the natural resources of which they have plenty – sun and wind. Something I read when we visited the windmills made famous by Cervantes’ madly tilting Don Quixote suggested the locals worked out a long time ago to harness these resources as their only reliablemainstays – if only Australian policymakers were so wise.

As we rolled into the steep slopes of the southern tip of Andalucía, the olive groves shrank and seemed to welcome the presence of other species – aberrant oaks and life-giving figs poked up amongst the olives with an appealing diversity after so many homogeneous kilometres. Even grass is allowed between rows in many of the smaller farms, surely a welcome cover for hungry soils under the harsh Spanish sun.

It got me reflecting back on the abundance of Spanish olive oil available throughout the country (and indeed, in Australia and elsewhere) and wondering where the artisanal local oils are to be found? You know, that whole ‘just because it’s local doesn’t mean it’s good’. For example, the region in which we live in Victoria has an abundance of potatoes, most of them grown in big monocultures and sprayed regularly – not what I’d prefer to feed my family… (fortunately it is easy where we live to access the organic and chemical-free potatoes grown by the many lovely small-scale farmers with which we’re blessed).

And then we visited the lovely mountain region of La Vera in the northerly part of Extremadura and saw firsthand how small-scale growing can be aggregated, scaled, and become ubiquitous and still delicious and fair… through the collective model (which of course the olive growers also utilise). La Vera is the most famous pimentón (Spanish paprika) producing region in Spain (Murcia being the other). Back in 1937 the local growers formed a syndicate, and then in 1938 established a cooperative to reduce competition amongst themselves and to create an entity with a real opportunity for export.

Drying and smoking sheds for the pimenton

A niche artisanal (arguably non-staple) product like pimentón can quickly saturate a solely local market, and given it is sold as a dried powder in a tin, it is readily transportable without refrigeration – the perfect product for the age-old spice trade. And witnessing the relatively small-scale fields growing the crops and the old drying sheds where the pimentón are still taken to be dried and given their irresistible smokiness was heartening – I’m heading home with 3kg for my chorizo making – happy meatsmith!

But of course cooperatives aren’t all fair to everyone just because they’re fair to their members. At the recent launch of the Farm Cooperatives and Collaborations Pilot Program in Australia we heard from a number of very large case studies, including CBH, the huge grain cooperative in WA with an annual revenue of over $3 billion that export more than 90% of the grain produced, largely for livestock feed and fuel. We also heard from TSBE in Queensland, a cooperative with $5 billion in revenue that owns feedlots, intensive pig and poultry sheds, and apparently got its start with CSG revenue (food and agriculture are only 15% of their turnover if I noted that correctly).

We ate quite well in Spain – we had ready access to fresh fruit and veg and a variety of interesting Spanish cheeses (such as the lovely, stinky Torta del Casar and the plentiful queso de oveja – curado is much nicer than semicurado) – and made many of our meals in the Slothvan with beautiful views of the wealth of castles that litter the landscape.

Foraged figs & grapes from a monastery we camped next to, paired with fried potatoes with smoked piment and white anchovies…

The milk was uniformly awful (we could only find UHT, as is the norm for much of Europe sadly), and aside from rare exceptions the bread was mostly terrible. Truck stop food was inspiring – made fresh and with obvious care – there are carnicerías in the truck stops (!), and vast deli options for local cheeses as well as the meat offerings. Of course the meat is almost entirely factory farmed, but with artisanal touches in the processing… more on all of this later in the jamón post.

Truck stops were the best road trip food!

Our time in Spain was too short and research was mostly observational and influenced by combining a learning trip with a family adventure, but driving across its vast, dry landscapes from which water must surely be rung out of stone to produce 50% of the EU’s olive oil was certainly more informative than merely scanning and devouring the menus of its cities as we did in previous lives. While consuming food is a central and critical part of life, focusing purely on taste can too easily get stuck on the aesthetic rather than the ethic, whereas following the chain back to where your food is produced can tell you so much more about the communities who grow it and the quality of what they grow.

Having just been to Slow Food’s Terra Madre and braved the crowds at Salone del Gusto in Torino, I have many more thoughts on the problem of privileging the aesthetic aspects of food over the ethics… as well as on the importance of democracy in the food sovereignty movement to effect real change… but just now the cliffs of Cinque Terre beckon. 😉

This is a look at the lure of productivism, and seduction by technocrats, a story bounded by corporate greed and hegemony. I’m not going to bore you with lots of academic terms, but I will quickly define a couple and then move on to our time at the PPPE last week. Apologies for over simplifying what are complex and intersecting concerns.

Productivism is, simply put, the pursuit of more productivity. It is ‘growthism’ – the notion that more production is necessarily good. Applied to growing pigs, it means that more piglets per litter, bigger pigs in a shorter time, bigger hams, and more kilos yielded from each carcass are all indisputably desirable.

Technocrats are scientists and technical experts who have a lot of power in politics or industry due to a culture of valuing technological solutions. Applied to growing pigs, it means pharmaceutical companies who are quick to provide technical solutions to problems created by the industry’s unsustainable production methods. Air quality’s an issue? We have a vaccine for that.

Corporate greed is generally faceless. Many if not most of the humans inside corporations are individually decent people and mostly harmless, but collectively they wield disproportionate power and have a fiduciary duty to work for the benefit of the corporation aka its shareholders. Shareholders’ dividends are valued above all else, and are often served best by technocrats’ solutions. Corporate greed is not interested in system reform to create a fair world for everyday people and the animals they raise.

Hegemony as I am using it here is understood in terms of the ways that the elite or governing powers coerce consent from the very people they subjugate. Applied to intensive livestock industries, it is through a complex web of economic and cultural controls that big companies convince family farmers that confining their animals is morally just and ‘the only way’ to ‘feed the world’ (and their families). When the shed needs upgrading because half the pigs have pneumonia and your kids need new shoes, you’re hardly likely to embark on a philosophical journey through the ethics of confining animals, you’re going to buy another bottle of Ingelvac MycoFLEX and continue to complain about activists breaking into your sheds.

So what happens when a couple of small-scale free-range pig farmers go to the country’s largest gathering of intensive pork producers? We found ourselves so far outside the echo chamber I couldn’t even hear it anymore, but it transformed my thinking on strategies for reform.

The PPPE is the pork industry’s bi-annual conference that brings together pork producers, veterinarians, drug companies, feed suppliers, and manufacturers of equipment (mostly for intensive pig sheds such as farrowing crates). Very few small-scale growers attend as it’s perceived to be pitched at large, intensive production systems (and I can affirm that this is the reality, but an issue APL have stated they are keen to address).

As members of Australian Pork Ltd (APL), we are entitled to a flight and accommodation for one of us to attend, so this year we decided we would go and learn more about the concerns of the intensive industry to help in our work to get more pigs back out onto paddocks. We knew it would be challenging and frustrating at times, but I was really keen to put a face to the people who run intensive farms by spending a few days amongst them. I’m still processing my complicated emotions about it all, but one thing is very clear to me – farmers are not the problem.

As expected, people are mostly lovely. The producers we met are families with children young and old, more often than not multi-generational pig farmers who’ve been through the intensification of the industry and are now copping the community opprobrium of being considered ‘factory farms’ while trying to make a living in a commodity food system that is increasingly in crisis (just look at dairy).

Most speakers were vets, animal scientists, and sponsors – very few producers actually spoke in the sessions we attended.

The conference opened with a futurist who dazzled the audience with the promise of more shiny technology looming just over the horizon, but it was such snake oil I’ll be brief. He told us what we could do with Big Data on Google Trends, to sign up now for Skymuster (which we did, heh, but he also told us his plans to steal a Skymuster satellite from rural Australia because it will be so much quicker than his broadband in Sydney – great guy). He dangled the promise of ear tags for pigs that will be able to ‘smell disease’ and compute feed conversion ratios in real time. Have a look at Spider goats, and suffice to say that he was a true technophile and Productivism Personified. This set the scene for a more hopeful, technologically-enabled future for the pork industry.

Throughout the conference, there were a few defensive mentions of the broader community calling what they do ‘factory farming’. In fact, Robert van Barneveld, the CEO for Sunpork Farms (one of the largest pork producers in Australia with approximately 40,000 sows) made the rather telling comment, ‘we’re accused of being factory farms – if only! Life would be a dream!’ He went on to expound on how in factories everything is uniform and so production is seamless and efficient, and that this was apparently a goal for the pork industry to work towards by improving genetics and refining nutrition at all life stages of pigs.

Air quality only got one mention that we heard, when American swine scientist Mark Wilson was discussing recent advances in seasonal infertility and heat stress. He made a sort of parenthetical comment that there was sometimes over 50ppm ammonia in some pig sheds. For the record, anything over 10ppm reduces the respiratory defences and increases the risk of infection (in both pigs and workers in intensive sheds). Zinpro, the company Wilson works for, produces ‘performance minerals’ to ‘improve performance’/counter the ill effects of intensive systems.

The Zinpro website has this to say about lameness:

‘When a sow is lame, it leads to lower feed intake (especially during lactation), decreased reproductive performance and ultimately early exit from the herd.’

Not,

‘When a sow is lame, she’s probably suffering, and this should be avoided at all costs.’

The second statement requires non-hegemonic thinking – that is, one would have to question the system that is causing the lameness, but when one’s income and identity are entirely tied up in those sheds, this question is very difficult to ask, and performance minerals must seem genuinely helpful.

Air quality was flagged by the final speaker we heard (who runs 2000 sows in Victoria), who called for improvements in temperature, hygiene, and air quality, but did not discuss the latter two in his talk at all – they simply appeared in the concluding slide.

Sponsors introduced each session of the conference – Zoetis, Primegro, Elanco, Biomin, and Boehringer Ingelheim just to name a few of the pharmaceutical sponsors. They have a solution for everything, and at no point did we hear these sponsors or ag scientists entertain the question of why so many pigs have pneumonia, pleurisy, lameness, and post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) in the first place. (For comparison, none of these ailments are common in small-scale free-range pig farming except occasional lameness in sows from joining injuries.)

The very first session we attended was on biosecurity, a paramount concern to the intensive livestock industry. Biosecurity is important we were told because the advantages of lower infection include: increased animal welfare; increased production; decreased antibiotic use; and increased food safety. Infection in sheds can be catastrophic as disease moves through an immune-compromised herd of closely confined animals – imagine someone hops onto the Frankston line at peak hour with anthrax.

To manage biosecurity, the crowd of producers was told to eradicate wild poultry such as ducks so they don’t infect your herd; manage the inevitable rat infestations; and require visitors to shower and change into orange prison suits before entering the property so you can identify the risky stranger on your property. A question from the floor was ‘so how are the free-range farms managing their biosecurity?’ to general consternation at the risk farms like ours must be presenting to theirs.

When a room full of people unquestioningly accepts advice to force visitors to wear orange prison suits onto the farm you know we have a long way to go to get back to the reasonable person test. No wonder Joel Salatin wrote a book called ‘Folks, this ain’t normal’.

The planning requirements around intensive piggeries for buffer zones to protect the amenity of other humans, animals, waterways and soils should force a major re-evaluation of the systems we need buffering from, not constant revisions to just how far sheds need to be from us. If it’s not fit to be near to, it’s probably not fit to exist.

Technocrats cannot solve the problem of air quality in confinement systems. Vaccinations for pneumonia, pleurisy, and porcine circovirus (PCV2) are bandaids on an increasingly antimicrobial resistant wound. Vaccinations aren’t the solution, they’re just another problem. Same goes for more or better fans and air conditioning.

The solution for air quality is to have less pigs per farm and to keep them outdoors.

The solution for the risk of infection is to have less pigs per farm and to keep them outdoors.

I will mention one more speaker, an industry shill who did the conference no favours with her hyperbolic rant and defensive defence of intensive livestock systems. Jude Capper is a self-described ‘livestock sustainability consultant’ whose bio says she is ‘Defending beef daily! Passionate about livestock production, dedicated to giving producers the tools and messages to explain why we do what we do, every single day.’ She managed to misquote Michael Pollan while telling the audience they need to control their message so that ‘self-appointed food experts’ like him don’t, and encouraged the industry to recruit ‘mommy bloggers’ to their cause as people can relate to mothers.

Bovidiva, as Capper calls herself on her blog and social media, has posts in defence of routine antibiotic use, and even one objecting to concerns about industry-funded scientists like herself. The shame of her inclusion in the program is that we did hear discussions of the need to reduce antibiotic use and signs that industry is ready to start talking about some of the hard topics, and Capper’s performance belied the fact that the industry has made headway on a number of things such as the voluntary phase out of gestation stalls (though not farrowing stalls as yet).

People who set themselves up to ‘defend the industry’ are not helpful to society’s project of constant improvement – and it’s particularly shameful when these are allegedly academics who should be trained in the cool eye of objectivity and vigilance against bias. This conference would benefit from open discussions of the problems of air quality and its impact on animals and workers, management of effluent, overuse of antibiotics, and financial pressures inherent in the commodity food system amongst other concerns facing the industry. So long as the conference is funded by the pharmaceutical industry and others who profit from pig producers, this seems unlikely to happen, to the detriment of the farmers and communities they feed.

‘We at APL do have some initiatives under way to better show what happens on a pig farm, but disappointingly getting our producers to cooperate in using their facilities to host media or community groups has been very unsuccessful. This is a significant risk to our industry. […] Being profitable isn’t the same as being sustainable if the community doesn’t believe in what you’re doing. One of the communication principles I’ve previously written about states “we are not afraid of others seeing what we do.” Today, I don’t believe this is true.’

It is encouraging to see an industry leader calling for transparency, and pointing out that if you’re not willing to let people see what you do, then there might be something wrong…

The task before those of us working towards an ethical and ecologically-sound agricultural future is enormous, and we must work with farmers in intensive systems if there is any hope for reform. We have to listen to their financial and social constraints, and offer alternative financially-viable models.

In working with intensive livestock producers, we have to understand who holds the real power – the corporations who supply them with medications that make those systems function, and the processors and retailers like Coles and Woolies who set prices and leave farmers vulnerable to fluctuations on the global market.

Until farmers of all produce are able to control the price they charge for their food based on what it costs them to grow it, we cannot have a fair food system. The dairy crisis has sharply reminded us of how broken the system really is – let’s all work together before it’s too late for everyone.

My interest in community-supported agriculture started in early 2000 as an eater in search of local, organic vegetables for my dear little family of three, soon to be pregnant with the fourth of ultimately five Jonai. We were living in Santa Cruz, California, pursuing the granola, earth-mama lifestyle so prevalent in that part of the world in spite of the exorbitant cost of living. Living on just $35,000 per annum with a rent of $1600 per month, we didn’t have cash to spare.

I was a vegetarian at the time, which helped keep food costs down, but I was also determined to feed the little people I had grown inside my own body organic produce only. And so after many months of joyful shopping at Santa Cruz’s excellent twice-weekly farmer’s markets, we stumbled across the CSA farm run by the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Even now, the UCSC CSA vegie box is a mere $25/week, payable as $560 in advance of the 22-week season. It was a struggle to find the money up front, but UCSC offers low-income households a few options to improve access, and we were able to pay in two instalments instead of one.

The bounty was incredible – a box of seasonal fruit and veg plucked from the farm each morning before collection time. Interacting with the student farmers and hearing about the harvest – successes & failures – was a highlight of the week, often helping us understand better what was and wasn’t working in our own little garden a mile away from campus.

A decade later we found ourselves setting up our own farm in the central highlands of Victoria, Australia. From the beginning we were keen to run the farm as a CSA, but until we tested our supply of ethically-raised rare-breed pork and beef, we didn’t feel confident asking people to commit. It seemed wrong to ask the community to share our risk when we weren’t even sure what the risks were, and had no production data to know what our average litter sizes or carcass yields would be.

The first year of meat sales (second year on the farm) affirmed our caution in waiting to start the CSA. We had a lot to learn about farming and butchering, and were pleased with the way demand for our produce grew rather organically as supply grew, without placing undue pressure on us to produce more.

Halfway through that first year of selling meat, we crowdfunded a $30,000 boning room and I trained as a butcher while Stuart built it, and we see the crowdfunding as our first foray into community-supported agriculture, because that’s just what it was. People pledged an up-front payment for a reward of fresh pork we delivered once we had a licensed boning room. And that’s how it works – people take a risk with you and you deliver, and so we did.

The same month we got our licence for the boning room was also the month we launched our CSA. It was also just a few months before we reached peak production – an average of eight pigs and a side of beef per fortnight. We’d watched our land carefully over the previous two years as we went from our original single boar and five breeding sows until we reached two boars and 12 sows on our 69 acres in addition to an average of 18 cattle.

We have sufficient demand to grow more animals for meat, but our land would suffer, so we reached the limit set by our soil and climate. We’d set out to be an ethically-viable no-growth model, and two years in, we found the limit of our start-up growth. It also just happens to be a very full and fulfilling schedule, and the workload, while sometimes quite intense, is sustainable for a small family farm.

So with those three variables – taking over our supply chain with the boning room, reaching peak production, and launching the CSA – in January 2014 we went from running a small loss to making our first profit, and we’ve been profitable since.

The first month, we had eight subscribers, which gave us an assured income of just over $12,000 for the year. Six months into the CSA, we had 25 members, and by the start of the second year our community had grown to 40, with about two-thirds based in Melbourne and one-third spread around our region. As we enter the third year, we have 74 members and a waiting list for Melbourne, with room for about 15 more members in the region.

In exchange for 6 or 12 months payment up front, or a monthly payment, subscribers get 3, 5, 6 or 10kg bags of pork only or mixed pork and beef cuts, including our range of smallgoods. The bags now may also contain pet treats, bone broths, air-dried muscles such as coppa, lonza and pancetta, and charcuterie such as our popular pâté de tête made from the heads.

The CSA currently guarantees us an income of just under $100,000 out of a total revenue of approximately $170,000 projected for 2015-16. The remainder is about $50,000 in ad hoc sales in the region and through farm gate, and approximately $20,000 from our monthly workshops. Our profit margin is around 30%, giving us an income of just over $50,000 after all farm expenses are covered.

Our cost of living here is so low as we grow and barter for the majority of our food and live a low-consumption lifestyle that we find this income meets all our needs, and will actually increase slightly as we improve certain processes and eventually stop building new structures!

Aside from a secure income, there are too many benefits to the farmers and the eaters in community-supported agriculture to possibly quantify, but I’ll mention a few. For us, getting to know our members, their preferences, and their appreciation for our efforts and the uncommonly delicious results is invaluable. The emails, texts, and photos on social media sharing how people have cooked our meat, or how their children will no longer eat any sausages but ours are salve to knuckle-weary farmers at the end of a day of what must otherwise be thankless toil for those working in a disconnected, windowless industrial boning room or cavernous sheds full of shrieking, stinking, miserable pigs.

Since joining your csa our monthly spend on meat has reduced by heaps. Also the meat you provide is so nourishing that we often have some left over by the time the new bag arrives (usually bacon so i freeze it). We get the small pack and it is enough for three full size women who eat well! (One is 12 but she is the middle size person). AND of course the taste is sensational. All three of us were unable to stomach pork prior to trying yours! You are awesome! Thank you. (CSA member Tani Jakins, 2015)

Even the critical feedback – not enough meat on the ribs, too much fat on the bacon, uncertainty about the grey colour of our nitrite-free bacon – is so much easier to hear from people with whom we have an ongoing and genuine relationship. This feedback has helped me improve my butchering skills as members have guided me with their desires, just as it has taught many of them that fat is delicious and nitrites are the only reason most bacon is lurid pink.

Logistically, running a CSA with bags of mixed cuts enables me to ensure every carcass is fully utilised, and makes packing day a much simpler exercise than when I was cutting and filling bags to custom requirements. And the standard CSA set box model teaches eaters to be better, more resourceful cooks attached to seasons and the reality of just 28 ribs and two tenderloins per pig. It also means automated repeating invoices, instead of endless documentation of weights after packing followed by 100 tailored invoices into the night before delivering 400kg of meat.

Having attended the Urgenci: International Network for Community-Supported Agriculture conference in China in November, we’ve come back full of ideas from our CSA farming comrades around the globe, including plans to share our budget with members (starting with sharing the financial data here right now!), and preparation to host a members-only Open Day on the farm, with butchery & cooking demos, music, and of course a long lunch of Jonai Farms pork and beef surrounded with organic bounty from other growers in our beautiful region.

At Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths, we say we don’t need to scale, we need to multiply. In our region and across Australia we see this happening rapidly, and we’re delighted to be amongst at least half a dozen small-scale free-range pig farms within 100km of us. There’s room for many more if our waiting list is anything to go by, and imagine a land re-populated with families caring for the land, sending our kids to the local schools, and re-creating vibrant rural communities. You won’t get that with scale – quite the opposite in fact.

Community-supported agriculture comes from an ethics of connectedness, care, and solidarity. It ensures accountability at both the farmer and the eater end of the equation, provides a viable living for farmers, and helps everyone learn more about the hows and whys of food production. As we enter our third year of running our farm as a CSA, we’d like to thank our members – those who’ve been with us since the beginning and those recently arrived – we couldn’t do this without you.

If you’re interested in reading further about CSAs around the world, have a look at the Urgenci website, and especially the Principles of Teikei, developed in Japan, the birthplace of CSAs in the 1970s.

I met a beautiful farmer yesterday whose story I’ve been following with dismay for the last couple months. We walked around her paddocks admiring groups of healthy, happy pigs as she described her system for breeding, weaning, and feeding.

Jo’s farm smells of nothing but fresh air, sounds of birdsong and the occasional curious grunt from a well-fed pig with nothing to fear, and is in a rolling green valley well covered in lush spring grass.

In 2014, Jo Stritch of Happy Valley Free Range won Livestock Farmer of the Year.

In 2015, Jo was ordered by her local council to cease farming.

How could this happen? Because the Victorian planning scheme deems her operation ‘intensive’ due to more than 50% of the pigs’ nutritional needs being met by feed Jo imports onto the farm, and the Yarra Ranges has a ban on intensive production.

A ban on intensive agriculture is surely a welcome reflection of community sentiments that are turning against intensive animal agriculture. But when a small pastured pig farm is defined as intensive, something is wrong.

Let me unpack the issues.

‘Intensive animal husbandry’ is defined in the Victorian planning scheme as ‘Land used to keep or breed farm animals, including birds, by importing most food from outside the enclosures.’

Clearly this applies to nearly all pig and poultry operations, no matter whether the animals are confined in sheds or out on the pastures. No matter whether the pastured pigs are on bare dirt or well-covered paddocks. It therefore also applies to many equestrian and dairy farms that import a lot of their animals’ feed. Oh, and cattle farms, even just those who feed hay to their cattle in the leanest months of winter and the dry end of summer.

And to what purpose do we want to define these operations as ‘intensive’? In common parlance, most people consider animals that are confined and quite restricted in the extent to which they can move to be raised ‘intensively’. Pigs like Jo grows are not what the public thinks of as ‘intensive’.

What does bringing in feed do in reality? It builds fertility. What happens if you bring in feed for more animals than the land can sustain? It sours. If you concentrate stock numbers, such as in intensive animal agriculture, you can overly nutrify and indeed toxify the soils.

The ‘outdoor bred: raised indoors on straw’ production system for pigs have a practice of moving the ‘eco-sheds’ every two years and then not returning to that same spot for another two years to deal with the issues of souring.

A system like Jo’s, where the pigs are rotated regularly and stocking densities are vastly lower, shouldn’t actually encounter this souring of the soil. The regenerative farming movement is constantly grappling not with letting soured soil recover, but rather how to continually regenerate and build fertility in the soil.

One thing the neighbours who testified against Happy Valley commented on was ‘the condition of the paddocks’, which had improved since Jo decreased her stock numbers in November 2014. Free-range pig farmers talk a lot amongst ourselves about soil health and good coverage. And yet in the potato-growing region I’m in the paddocks are bare for months at a time, sprayed heavily with herbicide and fungicide so that nothing grows while they lay fallow.

Jo admits that in the first couple years of farming pigs her paddocks had less coverage than they do now. She says, ‘I did have stocking issues last winter with the grower pigs and I did lease extra land to solve that problem. I keep banging my head against the wall in wondering why they don’t see our business just like any other business, that has to bend and manoeuvre and restructure to suit its operating and functioning challenges!’

The so-called expert who gave evidence in the VCAT case against Happy Valley is an expert in intensive agriculture. ‘APL submitted that based on science it is not feasible for pigs to obtain most of their dietary requirements from pasture/forages alone.’ Right. Except for in nature.

Pigs also don’t build houses anywhere except in fairy tales but the intensive industry would have you believe that it is difficult for pigs to survive outdoors.

We’re not on a level playing field. While the government endorses high chemical inputs, barren vegetable-growing paddocks, thousands of animals confined in the stench of industrial sheds, and an increasing focus on exporting Australia’s bounty, Jo Stritch and other small-scale farmers are facing a fight to raise happy animals out on the paddocks to feed our communities. As one of our farming heroes Joel Salatin says, ‘folks, this ain’t normal.’